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Friday, 28 December 2012

As 2012 comes to an end, there is a little reminiscing of
the past year in London, including its many meals. 2012 was definitely the year of dirty food in
pimped or fancied-up guises – burgers, hot dogs and fried chicken have made up
much of the restaurant hype and queuing around town. Although fun and undeniably greasily
delicious, a few of my favourite openings have been altogether different.

Mari Vanna is one such place; tucked next to the glossy One
Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, this restaurant transports you to a Russian grandma’s
dacha, crammed with trinkets, old family photographs and flowery crockery. The décor is fabulously kitsch and cluttered,
yet the place is very polished and utterly charming.

Rye bread & pickles

The menu includes authentic Russian classics – we started
with a jar of crunchy pickles and delicious pickled mushrooms marinated in dill
and allspice, which were a great accompaniment to the rye bread.

Russian Olivier salad

Herring with new potatoes & onion

Russian salads are not the green, leafy kind,
but instead chopped vegetables bound with mayonnaise – our Olivier salad
included carrots, cucumber, peas and potato with Doktorskaya sausage. We also shared Russian blinis (not the little rounds, but larger, soft pancakes) with salty orange pearls of salmon roe and sour
cream, and fresh, briny salted herring with new potatoes and onion.

Siberian Pelmeni

From the mains, I went for the Siberian Pelmeni - little silky
dumplings filled with meaty minced beef and pork, served with more sour cream
on the side. The beef fillet stroganoff
was also good, served alongside nutty buckwheat with mushrooms.

Honey Cake

We finished with a delightful honey cake made up of soft
honey soaked sponge layered with a creamy filling, next to a chunk of gooey
honeycomb. It felt only right to follow this with a shot of their honeycomb
infused vodka (other flavours include a powerful horseradish).

The food is the perfect rich, stodgy antidote to the cold,
rainy streets of London at the moment, and the service is excellent. Although I was lucky enough to be taken to
Mari Vanna, the food is not too pricey (depending on how greedy you are with
all the starters), especially with their lunch set menu at £18 for 2 courses,
or £25 for 3 courses. There is nowhere
else like it in London, and I defy you not to be won over by its fairy tale
charm.

Sunday, 23 December 2012

To escape the shopping
madness of the last few days before Christmas, I spent a few hours in the
kitchen making friends and family some tasty edible presents instead. You can pick something very simple or more complicated, but just make
sure that it keeps and transports well.

Any
preserves in jars work really well (make sure you clean and sterilise the jars first) – last year I made a red onion marmalade and
this year I opted for a ruby-hued festive apple & cranberry chutney (a really
simple Good Food recipe that’s great with cheese www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8028/apple-and-cranberry-chutney). You
could also go for jars of preserved lemons or pickled pears to use in cooking,
for something a little different.

For something sweet, I have
made delicious pistachio stollen bars (a great Dan Lepard recipe that is a lot
simpler than making a traditional stollen with all of the kneading and proving - www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/02/christmas-party-recipes-dan-lepard). These keep for a couple of weeks if you brush
liberally with melted butter and dust with icing sugar before wrapping well
with foil. Cookies or biscuits always go down well (choose something with the Christmas spices of ginger, nutmeg and
cinnamon, or stud with dried cranberries for a festive flavour), and if they need to last, crunchy
almond biscotti are perfect.

Sugary sweets also make great gifts – buying a sugar thermometer makes it really easy to
make chewy toffees, creamy fudge or crunchy brittle. I made a brittle for the first time, with
salty peanuts and aromatic cardamom to offset all the sugar, that looks great broken
into shards within a kilner jar.

Friday, 7 December 2012

Street food in in the capital has certainly changed in the
last few years – areas and markets in London have seen a surge in vans and
stalls serving up gourmet and affordable plates, with anything from burritos
to gyoza. Certain vendors have gathered
cult followings, and have even gone on to open restaurants – Meat Wagon started
as a truck, and has since spawned the rammed Meat Liquor and Meat
Market.

After a sold out street food event in the summer, FEAST has
just set up for 4 days (6-9th Dec) off Upper Street in Islington,
and it is definitely a who’s who of the best street food in the city. This old Victorian sorting office has
temporarily been transformed into a buzzing Christmas banquet, with street food
from Big Apple Hot Dogs, Lucky Chip and Pizza Pilgrims among others, along with
stalls from restaurants including Ceviche, HIX and Moro.

Delicious hot cider with clove and bay (plum and port punch
and a warm negroni were also on offer from the bar) kept us warm while we scouted
out the best looking food. After lots of
deliberation I went for one of Yum Bun’s steamed buns filled with tender,
golden belly pork with hoisin sauce, and Mexican poached eggs with avocado
salsa from The Good Egg. Other treats on
offer included giant pans of macaroni cheese, steaming ramen, beautiful
colourful meringues and gooey chocolate brownies.

Get down there this weekend if you can – the tickets are
sold out for tonight but there are still some left for tomorrow and Sunday
(£7.50 each). You can even buy a
Christmas tree on your way out – the perfect way to get into the festive spirit
after some Christmas feasting.

Sunday, 2 December 2012

Although it’s now December and very chilly outside, it’s
nice to have something fresh and vibrant for dinner in contrast to the messages
of turkey and trimmings bombarding us already.
These Vietnamese summer rolls were the perfect thing to make for friends
coming round, as you just need to do a
little bit of chopping, and then get your guests to do all the hard work.

Feel free to mix and match the fillings with whatever you
fancy, but it’s best to have a combination of noodles, fragrant herbs, fresh
vegetables and crunchy nuts for a good texture.
The dipping sauce works well as a tangy accompaniment, and also works well
with finely chopped spring onions instead of the sesame seeds, or more chilli
for a fiery kick.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

Round rice paper
wrappers

Cooked rice
vermicelli

Cooked prawns (or any
meat you fancy)

Toasted & chopped
peanuts

A mixture of finely
sliced cucumber, spring onion, carrot and lettuce, or any other vegetables (sliced
avocado and cooked green beans both also work well)

Chopped fresh mint
& coriander

Sesame & Chilli Dipping Sauce

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp fish sauce

Juice of 2 limes

1 tsp sesame seeds

1 red chilli finely
chopped

Once you have assembled the filling ingredients and made the
dipping sauce (just mix all the ingredients together), all you need to do is soften the rice wrappers in a large bowl
of hot water for 30 seconds – 1 minute (a couple at a time works fine). Shake off the excess water or dry on a clean
tea towel and place the filling inside, flip the ends over and roll up - it takes
a bit of a practice, and don’t be too greedy with the filling as this makes it a
lot trickier to roll into a neat shape.

Double chocolate
& pistachio cookies

After such a virtuous main course, it seemed only right to
have something a little more sinful afterwards.
Before the glut of mince pies begins, these little cocoa rich cookies
studded with chunks of white chocolate and pistachios are an easy and delicious
treat.